The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1887-09-15
In a. Capuchin's Tomb.

A Rome letter says: The Caphchin
brother, attired in his long habit OF
coarse brown frieze. his waist encir-
cled by hempen rope. his stocking
less feet bound in sandals, his un-
trimmed beard and shorn head bare.
except for diminutive skull-cap, is a
familiar sight on the streets in Rome,
which he patiently traverses, carry
ing an earthen pitcher as a receptacle,
while he begs aims from house to
house.
There is peculiarly stolid express
sion on the face of these men, as
though everything human, or, at all
events, everything bordering on the
highest attributes of humanity. had
been stamped out of their nature,
leaving mere machine-an unwashed
one at that.
The Church of the Fraternity is in
the piazza of the same name in the
immediate vicinity of the Piazza Bar
berini. 1t was founded by Cardinal
Barberini, brother of Pope Urban VIII.
in 1624-the same cardinal who was.
the friend of Milton when he visited
the Eternal city in 1888. The church,
contains the tomb of the founder and
many remarkable treasures of art, in
Guiding the magnificent painting by
Guido, representing michael the
Archangel Trampling the DeviI'-the
latter portrait of Pope. Innocent X,
for whom the painter seems to have
had an inveterate hatred.
Passing through the church a few
steps to the right will lead you to as
ghastly and at the same time as gro
tesquely horrible a spectacle as the
most morbid searcher after fiesh-creep-
ing experiences can possibly desire.
A series OF four connected small apart
ments, the floors of which are made of
earth said to have been carried from
Jerusalem, contain the horrors speak
OF. The walls and ceiling are literally
decorated with ornamented devices
constructed by cunning workmen out
of human bones. The bones of the
vertebra, wrists, and ankles are a.
ranged so as to describe circles and
curves. These figures are interspersed
here and there with skulls, femurs and
humerus, tibias, fibulas, ulnas and ra-
dius.
The same horrid ornaments are ar
ranged around the person of a de-
ceased brother, who appears suspended
against the middle of a wall, incased
in the coarse brown cloth, the gar
ment he lived, died and was buried in.
The dry skin clinging to the face of
the skeleton grins in horrible moekery
as the living brother, his former COM
panion in the flesh, conducts YOU
around this decorated charnel-house.
He looks as though he chuckled over
the fact of having been released from
the grave below to give place to a
brother more recently defunct, for it
is the rule of the fraternity-who are
compelled to make small burial
ground meet the requirements of the
order-when death takes place to dig
up the longest inferred to make room
for his successor.
There is quality in the earth en-
ployed that has the effect of prevent
ing decay of the body, drying it up in
mummy fashion, and preserving the
hair, presenting a far more horrible
effect than if bleached bones were pre-
sented to view.
There is a weird uncanniness about
this strange mixture of the living and
dead, and the latter divested of SOL
emnity by environment of orna-
mental osteOlogy, while the air of the
survivor seems toned down to an un,
natural sepulchralness-a sort of half
way condition between life and the
tomb.